


Cousland Reprise

by FrozenAbattoir



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 03:52:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16846591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrozenAbattoir/pseuds/FrozenAbattoir
Summary: "'Cause with my mid-youth crisis all said and doneI need to be youthfully felt, 'cause god I never felt young."-Hozier, Jackie And Wilson





	Cousland Reprise

**9:30 Dragon // Ferelden**

    Nat feels older. And she should, of course. Relatively speaking. Time carries on like a soldier on a forced march. Unable or unwilling to stop, pushing through pain and weakness one step at a time. Once she had wanted nothing more than to quicken its pace, to be old enough to join her brother and father with their gleaming armor and glittering swords. (A foolish thought, that. In Bryce Cousland’s eyes, his little girl would never be old enough for the horrors of war.)

    But she didn’t have to wait very long. War came to her in the night, all senseless slaughter and callous destruction. Iona bled out before her eyes, choking on the arrow lodged in her throat. Her nephew Oren– only a little boy, practically a baby, the sweetest child there ever was– butchered next to his mother. He was just seven years old when Howe’s men ran him through.

    She still sees his face in her dreams. One of many that have come to haunt her nights, competing with the ever-present murmur of the darkspawn collective consciousness. There are some days (many days, in fact) when she wishes she could go back. Just be a child again, when her biggest problems were those damned dresses her mother insisted she wear when the castle entertained company.

    “Knights don’t wear dresses,” she whined.

    “But little girls do.” Eleanor Cousland’s word was final. Try all she might, Nat had never managed to make her mother budge an inch once she’d made up her mind. Even on that last night. Mother told her to run, and she had obeyed. She left her parents behind, her father bleeding out across the storeroom floor and her mother crouched over him protectively.

    Nat feels older. So much older than she should.


End file.
